


Flat White

by ApollonDeuxMille



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Drabble, Implied Relationship, M/M, gobblepot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 10:26:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8574739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApollonDeuxMille/pseuds/ApollonDeuxMille
Summary: ‘Who’s that?’ Jim’s voice is a death croak. He hears a second shuffling kick on his door and he sits up, recognising a wisp of alarm floating around his head. The door sounds for the third and final time. 
‘Who is that?’





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is also posted on my Tumblr @delicatelyserved

The palm that cups the side of his bleeding face is wide and coarse and trembling with hesitation. It feels like a warm hearth stone after a bad evening that leaves him paralytic and incapable of peeling himself away from the whispering flickers as they slowly diminish into cold ashes. He hears rumbling tyres on the tarmac beneath the roaring downpour, then a voice he recognises and another and another. The comforting warmth is gone. He stutters, it reappears, nestling on his breastbone until it vanishes with dreadful finality. Abruptly he finds car leather in place of that hand to cradle his fractured cheekbone, his face glued down with claggy blood to the back seat. Someone later tends to him with detached professionalism.

_It looks worse than it is. Only three stitches. The swelling will last._

Then comes the recommendation of bed rest, but the fire coaxes him to sit at its feet, so he unburdens the room of occupants with an irresponsibly absent wave of his pistol. The grate goes in front of the flames before he lets himself settle down and he finds the enormous hearth stone is perfectly warm, but he cannot quite recall the rough pad of a thumb caressing small circles into his skin, nor the jittery anxiety of the man who decided to stoop in the pouring rain to hold him and wait.

* * *

 His military cot sags further to the ground with every day spent like this. He stares into the empty corner of the room where black mould is flourishing, a lungful of deep sighs drifting out of him. He can’t smell the uneaten food growing fur in various greasy boxes and paper bags, nor the half finished milky coffees turning into curdled jelly scattered all about his gloomy den. He had opened the window some days ago for a little freshness and the persistent rain storms swirling all over Gotham were now blowing coldness into the cramped rooms. He shudders, hungover and famished, and the task of fetching sustenance is too great to pull him out of his pit, so all he does is roll over under his blanket and listen to the damp wind howling through his window. He draws small circles with a thumb into his thigh, trying to imagine wet, candle-white skin instead of his dirty sweatpants.

* * *

 He didn’t want to make an appearance until the swelling had fully receded, but the black stitches remained, growing out of his face like thin, sticky feathers. It annoys him, but he doesn’t want to lose the momentum of what happened so he cannot wait another day. Butch is driving with a customised prosthetic, Gabe is holding two cups of coffee. Seven minutes later he is staggering awkwardly up three flights of stairs with a paper cup in each hand, desperate and fluttering at the thought of seeing the black apartment door with the suspicious crack running along the centre. He can’t knock when sees it so he precariously balances and kicks as politely as he can with the side of his foot. There are no replies even after the third attempt, but he dares not call out, dares not reveal himself.

* * *

 ‘Who’s that?’ Jim’s voice is a death croak. He hears a second shuffling kick on his door and he sits up, recognising a wisp of alarm floating around his head. The door sounds for the third and final time.

‘Who is that?’

‘Jim? I have coffee.’

‘Oswald?’

They don’t speak again for a few moments. Jim shudders as the gale whistles through. Oswald grimaces as his mangled knee crackles under his weight. He’s about to turn to leave when the door clumsily shunts open and a sliver of Jim’s form manifests, all clouded eyes and grey skin behind the door chain.

‘It’s…a flat white.’ Jim shuffles and looks back into the room behind him. He’s tight with nerves when he speaks again.

‘Now isn’t a good time.’

Oswald can’t see inside, but he can smell cold rain, mould and the musty stench of a tired body. He’s disappointed. His stitches feel like crawling spiders and he needs to rest his leg. He holds Jim’s coffee towards the gap in the door, staring at the tattered carpet edges as the chain scrapes back, a wide, coarse palm brushing against his fingers to take the cup.

‘Your hands are freezing.’

‘Thanks for the coffee.’

The door is almost completely shut when they finally make eye contact. Jim’s eternally doleful eyes are more vacant than they’ve ever been. Oswald resists the urge to scratch frantically at his stitches. The door clicks shut. He wants to hiss and screech until Jim lets him in, but as he clenches his empty fist he feels glad that he staggers back down the stairs with only his cup left in his hand. For now, it’s just enough.


End file.
